called
to the
WILD
Manitoba’s Hudson Bay offers up a mesmerizing
surf-and-turf extravaganza: beluga whales and polar bears.
By Robert Earle Howells
The Seal River Heritage
Lodge, situated on the
southwest shore of
Hudson Bay, hosts
wildlife-watchers as
well as the occasional
wildlife that watches.
108 N a t i o n a l G e o g r a p h i c T r av e l e r
playing it in my mind seems like fantasy.
Amid a swelling symphony of grunts, clicks,
and whistles, all three whales rolled their
heads up (belugas have necks) and affixed
single-eyeball gazes upon me. No question
who the curio here was. I lay silent and still,
bobbing with the light chop. Rendered immobile by my dry suit and breathing apparatus (and looking like a bloated garbage
bag), I hovered in the cold water, unable to
whistle or click back. It was unnerving at
first. But as I anthropomorphized that semblance of a smile on the belugas’ faces and
settled into watching their steady movements, I relaxed. A sense of intimacy came
over me. Never had I been so close to something so large that felt so benign, I mused,
perhaps even friendly.
And then: “Bob, there’s a polar bear in
the water!”
Uh-oh.
A TIGHT ECHELON OF GHOSTLIKE
WHITE SWIMMERS EMERGED
FROM THE MURK.
110 N a t i o n a l G e o g r a p h i c T r av e l e r
CHURCHILL , MANITOBA , IS BEST KNOWN
for its annual fall mustering of polar bears.
Hundreds of lumbering animals pace the
shoreline, awaiting the freeze-over of Hudson Bay and a return to their icebound lives
as hunters of ringed seals. Visitors huddle
in big-wheeled buses to witness the world’s
MICHAEL POLIZA/GALLO IMAGES/GETTY IMAGES
In a world teeming with virtual adventures, encountering wildlife in their natural settings is a refreshing dose of reality.
Increasingly, it’s what I seek in my travels.
When I can hear the splashing crescendo
of a whale’s breach, smell the pungent
muskiness of a herd of elk, or catch the glint
of a gator’s eye, I know that a bit of the real
world endures. I like being reminded that
separation from the natural world is an
illusion. Indeed, here I am, as alive and
breathing as the creatures I’m watching.
Or the creatures watching me.
I’d been floating in Hudson Bay for
maybe two minutes when the first three
whales sidled into my narrow snorkel-mask
view. A tight echelon of ghostlike white
swimmers emerged from the murk and
glided beneath me until their heads were
almost directly under mine. What happened next was so surreal that even re-
REBECCA REIMER (OPENING PAGES), KEVIN SCHAFER/CORBIS (LEFT)
H
ow I came to be snorkeling in Hudson Bay not far from 3,000pound beluga whales is the story of a growing obsession. Over
the past few years, I’ve watched humpback whales feed off the
British Columbia coast, hovered offshore in a kayak while
grizzly bears munched on tender late-spring grass, cast a flashlight beam on skulking caimans (crocodile cousins) from a canoe in the Amazon, watched elk rut on a Banff golf course, and
tiptoed through a herd of wild bison on an Oklahoma prairie.
largest land predators cooling their heels.
In the course of checking into polar bear
trips, I learned that the bears take a summer vacation of sorts not far from Churchill.
Summer is supernova time in northeastern
Manitoba. Wildflowers erupt, Canada geese
breed, polar bears laze about, and—here
was a revelation—beluga whales gather by
the thousands in the shallow mouths of
three rivers that flow into Hudson Bay.
The whales congregate in the Churchill,
the Nelson-Hayes, and the Seal to feed,
breed, and even to molt; they rub the sandy
bottom to shed a thick layer of skin.
Several outfitters make the most of this
irresistible conjunction by packaging trips.
The one I settled on, led by Churchill Wild,
is a weeklong trip called “Birds, Bears, and
Belugas,” which they base out of their small
Seal River Heritage Lodge, about 40 road-
less miles north of Churchill. Mike Reimer,
a veteran fishing/hunting/nature guide,
runs the lodge with his wife, Jeanne, who
comes from a family of Manitoba wilderness lodge owners.
“We have an exceptional location,”
Mike Reimer had told me before my trip,
“where we’re able to closely observe polar
bears, beluga whales, caribou, and wolves.”
Reimer added a philosophical note that
echoed my city-dweller’s enthusiasm for
wildlife-viewing vacations: “We want to
make sure that people are able to renew
their severed connection with land and sea.
I think that is what brings people north to
our wild places—it’s that pull to go back to
a wilderness where you can feel a closeness again with the Earth.”
A trip to Seal River entails an overnight
in Churchill, a town of 1,000 that takes its
polar bears—and bear tourism—seriously.
“If you see a bear,” said Rose Preteau,
Churchill Wild’s town-based driver and
hostess, “just head for the nearest house.
No one in Churchill locks their doors for
that very reason.” I didn’t have to test the
locals’ hospitality during my Churchill
strolls, but within a five-minute walk of my
motel I came upon a sobering warning sign
near the bay: “Polar Bear Alert. STOP. Don’t
Walk in this Area.”
More inviting were the gift shops, where
stuffed polar bears and associated souvenirs
abound. Belugas, I noticed, garnered only
second-class status; bear geegaws outnumbered whale trinkets five to one.
When I made the 40-mile flight by Turbo Beaver floatplane from Churchill to Seal
River Heritage Lodge the next day, the
lodge was the only dot on the horizon I saw.
No roads lead to the Seal
River—the action-central
Hudson Bay tributary for
spotting belugas (left) and
polar bears. Floatplane is
the way to go hereabouts.
Tour participants bed
down at the Seal River
Heritage Lodge, a remote
place with drift logs,
caribou antlers, fireweed, and the “calls of
loons and twittering
shorebirds,” says photographer Dennis Fast.
sphere of activity. They have myriad signals they send indicating when it’s time
to back off.”
Misgivings aside, I was dying to see a polar bear. And I only had to wait till the next
morning, when Reimer roused me with a
sharp knock at my door.
“Polar bear headed your way, Bob. He
might beat you to breakfast,” he said. I lumbered out with three fellow guests to watch
a distant white dot become an 800-or-sopound bear making for the lodge, which was
emitting tantalizing breakfast smells. He
moved gracefully across the wet boulders
exposed by a low tide and paused occasionally to rise and sniff in our direction.
Within minutes he had strolled up an
embankment covered in bright purple fireweed and began to pace a berm just outside our windows. Mike and Ian agreed that
he was well shy of fully grown, but still, this
guy was big and handsome—fairly fresh off
semipalmated plovers, and all manner of
godwits, curlews, and sandpipers. Flocks
of Canada geese would fly by. Marsh hawks
ran strafing missions, and red-throated
loons growled overhead. Lots of siksiks—
cute little arctic ground squirrels.
On these walks, I had to quell my preference for more charismatic fauna and
cultivate a subtler attunement to and an
appreciation for the spare landscape. No
mountains, no forests—virtually no trees—
but there was space. Lots of space. Green
spongy tundra from the bay to the western
horizon, spangled with wildflowers. The
feeling was primordial, prehuman. Nature
in full abundance. No human sights or
sounds. No, it wasn’t nonstop, big-game action. But it was peaceful.
BY M I DW E E K , A L L SYS T E M S W E R E G O
for a day of whale-watching. We piled into
twin inflatable Zodiacs, one of which was
SPACE, LOTS OF SPACE. THE FEELING
WAS PRIMORDIAL, PREHUMAN.
NATURE IN FULL ABUNDANCE.
the ice, so his coat was clean and his
physique full, though his breath left much
to be desired. Kidding. But he was just a
few feet away from us by the time he’d
moved to the back of the lodge, though on
the outside of the fence. When he reared
up aggressively, Mike had had enough. He
banged hard against the side of the building, which prompted Dakota, the lodge's
black Lab, to woof wildly. The bear backtracked, looped around the front of the
lodge, and disappeared toward the north.
Afterward, it occurred to me what had
really transpired. I had watched with my
naked eyes one of Earth’s most magnificent
animals move across his native landscape,
heeding his most fundamental instincts.
All without the aid of television wildlife
programming. Amazing.
112 N a t i o n a l G e o g r a p h i c T r av e l e r
an armed guide. For my stay, that guide was
naturalist Ian Thorleifson, a burly Icelandic
Manitoban who spent six years in the field
researching polar bears for the Canadian
Wildlife Service in the 1980s.
“You wouldn’t think a white, thousandpound bear could hide in a patch of willows,” Ian said. “But it can, and we don’t
want to surprise one.” Not that the bear is
lurking and hoping for a human meal. Most
likely it’s sleeping. “If you encounter one
close up, forget those stories about playing
dead,” Ian cautioned. “Stand firm. Make
yourself big. But whatever you do, don’t
run. He’ll take you for food for sure.”
So much for the illusions one might have
of polar bears as friendly or embraceable:
“. . .the most predaceous of all bears,” writes
Stephen Herrero in the morbidly fascinating book Bear Attacks.
Fear notwithstanding, I feel a bit conflicted whenever I’m in wildlife-voyeur
mode. Thrilling, sure, but what impact does
my presence have? What if I were to stum-
DENNIS FAST
It’s perched on a lonely Hudson Bay
promontory a few miles north of the Seal
River. Big living room windows aim south
across a tidal inlet of the bay and toward
the river. A spotting scope is at the ready
for whatever opportunity might arise. And
two towers, one inside and one out, might
give the lodge a penitentiary aspect, but
they afford excellent, and safe, perspective
should a polar bear amble by. Which happens frequently—and dictates lodge policy: No one leaves the compound without
ble over a sleeping bear, and Ian had to put
it down? Could I bring harm to the very
creatures I so value seeing?
“My opinion always has been that if you
really care about something, don’t go see
it,” Mike Reimer said with a hint of sarcasm. “But that kind of thinking is bad for
business. We always try to balance what is
best for the wildlife and environment with
a memorable experience for guests. We always allow the wildlife plenty of space to
let us know we are not welcome in their
T I D E S A N D W E AT H E R D I C TAT E W H E N
you can go out snorkeling with belugas, and
both conspired against us. Wind-whipped
chop on the water, wrong tides at the
wrong time meant easy walks across the
tundra and tidal flats for a couple of days.
Excitement on these strolls came largely
as bird sightings: bald eagles, tundra swans,
a sandhill crane. Shorebirds were in abundance: tiny Bonaparte’s gulls, huge herring
gulls, arctic terns, eider and pintail ducks,
outfitted with a welded-steel crow’s nest
of sorts, and motored five or so miles to the
Seal River estuary. I already had a sense of
the ubiquity of whales there. I’d seen hundreds of clustered white humps in the river when I’d flown over it a few days before,
but being among them in vivo was a different matter. As we chugged slowly into the
river mouth, we began to see the undulating humps of white whale backs, alternately submerging and surfacing to breathe.
Their expirations sounded like so many
weightlifters hoisting iron in a gym.
As we turned slow circles (it seems that
whales are less likely to spook when the
motor’s running), I pulled on my dry suit,
which both keeps water out and provides
buoyancy by way of tight gaskets around
neck and limbs. I mouthed my snorkel and
eased myself overboard.
Shortly after that first trio of whales eyed
me and disappeared, a quartet appeared.
Then individuals, mothers with calves—
groups of four, five, six—slid up in turn.
When I couldn’t see whales in the cloudy
water, I could hear them. Belugas are
among the most vocal cetaceans. Their
sounds have more to do with echolocation
than chitchat, but I couldn’t help imagining their amazement at the bloated thing
floating in their midst.
October 2008
113
Even when not frozen—
which it is for most of the
year—relatively shallow
Hudson Bay is littered
with chunks of ice. The
arctic hare (right) weighs
in at about ten pounds.
have been no scientific studies, he said, but
“my guess is that there’s no deleterious
impact of that kind of tourism whatsoever.”
Richard went on to add that the western
Hudson Bay whales are the largest beluga
population in the world (some 57,000).
Scientists are much more concerned about
the belugas that are threatened by pollution
in the St. Lawrence Seaway and by overhunting in Alaska’s Cook Inlet than by the
impact of swimmers on the thriving whales
in western Hudson Bay.
When our guide spotted a polar bear
swimming maybe a couple of hundred
yards away from me, he reeled me back into
the boat (I’d been tethered by my feet), and
we switched seamlessly back to bearwatching mode, bobbing in the outflow of
the Seal River. Ursus maritimus is a powerful swimmer. This one looked fiercely
determined as he paddled with his huge
forepaws and loudly exhaled the force of
his effort, which to me was movingly heroic. But this was a routine swim for him, I
learned. Bears might paddle as far as 300
miles after ice breakup. We backed away
to let him continue in peace.
Also upon my return I corresponded
with Ian Stirling, senior research scientist
for the Canadian Wildlife Service, author
of Polar Bears, and probably the world’s
foremost authority on the subject. I asked
him about the net value of tourism when
it comes to polar bear protection, wanting
to know if the consciousness-raising value
of bear-watching outweighs the impact of
our presence.
“I am a strong supporter of properly
done, non-harassing ecotourism,” Stirling
wrote back. “I think it is one of the most
MIKE GRANDMAISON/CORBIS (BELOW), TIMOTHY PATRICK FURRIER (RIGHT)
I was well aware, of course, that these
singers were big wild creatures with teeth.
I had asked our guide if they’d experienced
any untoward whale-human encounters.
“No,” he’d said. “We’ve never even had anyone scared by the whales. Sometimes they
nose a snorkeler, or suck a bit at a dry suit.
It’s just their curiosity. But if you reach out
to try to pet one, it will almost always swim
away.” I didn’t try. There was never any
question which was the huge beast in its
own domain, and which of us was the awkward visitor. I remained motionless.
Still, I had to wonder if our presence had
some impact on the whales.
Weeks later, I put the question to Pierre
Richard, a research scientist with the Canada Department of Fisheries & Oceans’ Arctic Aquatic Research Division. He chuckled.
“Impact? They might actually like it.” There
important things we do ecologically.” Like
Pierre Richard for the belugas, Ian Stirling
has a greater concern for the polar bears
in this area. No great surprise here: global
warming. He sent me a paper he wrote for
the journal Arctic that cited a decline in
population size, condition, and survival of
young bears “as a consequence of earlier
breakup of the sea ice brought about by
climate warming.” Early ice breakup means
less time hunting seals and more time
fasting on shore.
We spend the morning of our last day at
the lodge, back on the water’s edge. Fewer
whales this time, but lots of polar bears, no
doubt a causal relationship. Twice we see
mothers swimming with their cubs. Ferocious or not, small soggy polar bears swimming with Mom are as cute a sight as I’ve
seen in the animal world. On land, we spy
through binoculars a huge polar bear chasing off two others. Two more join the tussle. Five bears now, out on Fishing Point,
in the middle mouth of the Seal River. The
biggest guy is feeding on something, and a
closer look (still from hundreds of yards
offshore) shows that it’s a beluga.
Sometimes a whale gets stranded by a
low tide, I learn. Bears will leap in, club it
repeatedly with their front paws, and hold
its head underwater until it drowns. Then
it’s a prolonged dinnertime. Interestingly,
no one really noticed this bear-beluga phenomenon until about ten years ago. Concomitant with global warming?
“We’d had six years of warm springs and
hot summers with fires in the denning areas, the ice was late in forming in the fall,
and we started noticing bears feeding on
belugas,” guide Thorleifson explains. Pierre
Richard, on the other hand, is skeptical
about a global-warming link: “Bears will
take advantage of anything they can lay
their teeth on,” he told me.
In any event, it’s a reminder of the rawness of nature in the far north.
We pull away from the feast and find
ourselves again among the wheezy respirations of a pod of belugas. Slipping
into the water feels like coming back to a
special performance in progress—a little
slice of eternity, power, and beauty. And
symphony. When I reluctantly signal that
I’m ready to return, I get reeled in, ease over
the gunwale, and sit silently in the boat.
Few travel episodes have lodged so vividly in my consciousness as my underwater
sojourns with the beluga whales. At home
in the city, I can close my eyes and become
transported to places of astounding beauty, where I see grizzlies grazing beside a
fjord, bald eagles swooping down from the
heights of Sitka spruce, bison silhouetted
against a tallgrass prairie sunset. I know
also that somewhere in a frigid northern
ocean, a polar bear is heeding its ancient
instinctive call to swim home, and beluga
whales are filling the sea with melody.
It is the solace of wild places. It is, for
me, the meaning of the beluga’s song.
California-based Robert Earle Howells,
a two-time Lowell Thomas Gold Award
winner, is editor at large for National Geographic Adventure.
LOGISTICS: Churchill Wild’s seven-day,
six-night “Birds, Bears, and Belugas” package
is offered in July and August for $5,700
and includes all meals and wildlife viewing,
commercial flights between Winnipeg and
Churchill, and floatplane flights to and
from Churchill and Seal River Heritage Lodge.
866-846-9453; www.churchillwild.com.
“BEARS WILL TAKE ADVANTAGE
OF ANYTHING THEY CAN
LAY THEIR TEETH ON.”
October 2008
115
beyond
BELUGAS
A Dozen Animal Experiences of a Lifetime
CARIBOU ON THE MOVE
Few landscapes are as vast and empty as
the coastal plains at the foot of the Brooks
Range in northern Alaska—until some
150,000 caribou (wild reindeer) come
thundering through in an annual procession that can last for days. The famous
Porcupine herd migrates to the Arctic
National Wildlife Refuge in June to take
advantage of cool breezes that help them
ward off the population of biting bugs.
The migration generates riveting sideshows, too. There’s frenzied river crossings and ruthless predation as grizzlies,
wolves, and even bald eagles try to pick
off hapless calves. Float trips provide the
most convenient viewing. • Arctic Wild,
11-day trips, $4,200; www.arcticwild.com.
ABEC Alaska Adventures, nine-day trips,
$3,950; www.abecalaska.com.
SAVE THE SEALS
When word spread several years ago that
white, fuzzy, utterly adorable baby harp
seals were being slaughtered for their
pure white pelts, outrage spread quickly—
and Natural Habitat Adventures stepped
in with an irresistible alternative: a love-
fest rather than a bloodbath, which saves
some seals and is proving to be more profitable for the locals than selling fur. Nat
Hab brings groups to ice floes off Quebec’s
Magdalen Islands every March, where the
seals migrate from Greenland to bear their
pups. • Seven-day trips, $4,895; www.nathab
.com/north/seal-watch.
GORILLAS NOT TO BE MISSED
Despite poachers and war, some 700
mountain gorillas survive in the mountains of Uganda and Rwanda. The gorillas
were the life work of scientist Dian Fossey,
who was killed here in 1985. Participants
can trek to the rugged rain forests of
Uganda, where local trackers and guides
lead them to thrilling encounters with
our massive primate cousins. • $8,995 for
a 12-day lodge-based tour with Natural
Habitat Adventures; www.nathab.com
/africa /primate-watch.
BIG FIVE DRIVE-BY
The Big Five of African wildlife were sonamed by hunters because they are elusive and difficult quarry—not necessarily
because of their physical size. And what a
116 N a t i o n a l G e o g r a p h i c T r av e l e r
BY ROBERT EARLE HOWELLS
MICHAEL MELFORD/GETTY IMAGES (LEFT), DLILLC/CORBIS (RIGHT)
Here’s looking at you, kid: On an Alaskan diet of primarily lichen, leaves, and grasses, the caribou can run as fast as 50 miles an hour. Synchronized
swimming in the wild: Seals—perennially popular at zoos—are even better to watch in their natural habitats, from Quebec to the Galápagos (right).
formidable quintet to encounter in the
wild: lion, African elephant, Cape buffalo,
leopard, and rhinoceros. They’re all readily spotted (though not, of course, hunted)
in South Africa’s huge Kruger National
Park, where hippos, cheetahs, and giraffes
are also born free as the wind blows. The
southern part of the park is superb for
game-viewing and birding; where else are
you going to see a yellow-rumped tinkerbird? • For a DIY trip, enter through the
Crocodile Bridge Gate, a five-hour drive
from Johannesburg, and stay in the Lower
Sabie Main Rest Camp inside the park—
from $73 for a bungalow; www.sanparks
.org. Or go guided with a safari operator,
e.g., Eco Africa’s three-day southern Kruger
safari: $635; www.ecoafrica.com.
WHERE THE WILDEBEEST ARE
The spectacle of 1.5 million wildebeest
plus hundreds of thousands of zebras and
gazelles storming the plains of East Africa
—the Great Migration—has been called “the
biggest buffet on Earth” by Africa Adventure Consultants founder Kent Redding.
That much meat on the hoof attracts
hordes of predators, primarily lions and
crocodiles, adding life-and-death drama to
the display. The animals follow annual
rains (i.e., greener pastures) from Tanzania’s southern Serengeti in January to
northern Tanzania and Kenya’s Masai Mara
in August, where they remain through
November before funneling south again in
their 1,000-mile cycle. Best bet for viewing:
a safari with comfortable, movable camps.
• Africa Adventure Consultants Serengeti
Classic Private Camps, $1,950 per person
for four nights; www.adventuresinafrica
.com. CC Africa’s Serengeti Under Canvas luxury camps from $595 per person per night;
www.ccafrica.com/reserve_camp-1-id-2-22.
GRIZZLIES OFF YOUR PORT BOW
The grizzly bears of Knight Inlet in British
Columbia have a single obsession during
their waking months: to fatten up for their
long winter’s nap. In the spring and early
summer, that entails grazing on sweet
grasses along the shore of the inlet and,
later in the summer, feasting on salmon
that run in feeder streams. Either way,
they’re indifferent to respectful human
presence, which is what Knight Inlet Lodge
provides. Visitors can hover 50 yards offshore in a kayak or watch the big bears
from a small boat, and motor over to nearby Johnstone Strait to watch active pods
of orcas ply the waters. • Three-day package starts at $2,265; www.grizzlytours.com.
RAINING MONARCHS
When hundreds of millions of monarch
butterflies muster in the fir forests of
Mexico’s central highlands, they can bend
branches with their mass or carpet the
forest floor in an unbroken tapestry of
orange and black. And you can hear the
delicate sonata of flapping butterfly wings.
Peak season is January to early March,
before they flutter off 2,000 miles northward to the central United States and
Canada. The El Rosario sanctuary in
Michoacan is the most popular butterfly
reserve. • Natural Habitat Adventures, sixday trips, $2,895; www.nathab.com/latin
america/monarchs-of-mexico.
118 N a t i o n a l G e o g r a p h i c T r av e l e r
Chinstrap penguins dominate the Antarctic landscape on Half Moon Island and don’t seem to mind the attention of red-jacketed humans. The leopard
(opposite) is the smallest of Africa’s three big cats (including the lion and cheetah). In East Africa, wildebeest (below) display stunning determination.
KIM WOLHUTER/GALLO IMAGES/GETTY IMAGES (LEFT), WOLFGANG KAEHLER/CORBIS (TOP RIGHT), ANDY ROUSE/GETTY IMAGES (BOTTOM RIGHT)
MARCH OF THE PENGUIN-WATCHERS
For sheer cuteness, not to mention boxoffice gold, nothing matches the sight of
hundreds of thousands of Adelie penguins
gathered on the Antarctic Peninsula during the austral summer—unless it’s tens of
thousands of chinstrap penguins nestled
in a natural amphitheater. An Antarctic
wildlife cruise puts you close to these
animals as well as fur seals and cavorting
orcas, humpbacks, and minkes, and lollygagging fur seals—plus gazillions of albatrosses, shearwaters, petrels, prions, and
skuas. Trips with stops in the Falklands
and South Georgia Island can include
encounters with up to nine varieties of
penguins. • International Wildlife Expeditions, 19-day trips from about $9,990;
www.wildlifeadventures.com.
BIG-WINGED MIGRATION
When some 12,000 sandhill cranes rise as
one from roosts beside the Rio Grande
River in central New Mexico, their wings
extended the length of a grown man, the
sight is magisterial. “And the sound is otherworldly,” says the guru of birding guides,
Victor Emmanuel. “It reverberates and
dominates the landscape.” The cranes are
joined by 30,000 snow geese and 80,000
ducks, mid-November to mid-February,
in the Bosque del Apache National Wildlife
Refuge, where a loop road puts you as
close as 15 yards to the avian convention.
• Bosque del Apache NWR, www.fws.gov
/southwest/refuges/newmex/bosque. VentBird Tours offers seven-day trips from
$1,800; www.ventbird.com.
WILD, WILD HORSES. . .
Contrary to expectation, wild horses have
not ridden off into the sunset with most
other symbols of western wilderness. In
fact, thousands of the free-roaming creatures, descendants of cavalry and ranch
horses, still thrive on vast open ranges in
the West. The White Mountain herd of
southwestern Wyoming, about 200 strong,
is probably the most easily seen, via a loop
driving tour of the Bureau of Land Management’s White Mountain Herd Management
Area near Rock Springs. If you fall in love,
you can adopt an animal through the
BLM: www.wildhorseandburro.blm.gov.
• High Wild & Lonesome Adventure Horseback Vacations offers 7seven-day mounted
trips in the area: $2,500; www.hwl.net.
WEIRD SCIENCE IN THE GALÁPAGOS
The notorious oddities of the Galápagos
Islands are born of sheer isolation. About
600 miles off the coast of Ecuador, a
unique convergence of sea currents and
protection from the hand of man (97 percent of their land surface is national park)
makes for wonders that never cease: Giant
tortoises can weigh in at well over 500
pounds, marine iguanas dive with seals,
and the world’s northernmost penguins
share their turf with flamingos. Just when
you think you’ve seen it all, you meet
flightless cormorants, absurdly tame bluefooted boobies, or scads of seals snorkeling
with you. Small-boat cruises à la Lindblad
Expeditions’ National Geographic Islander
offer a sensible way to journey in Darwin’s
wake. • Lindblad Expeditions, 10-day trips
from $5,120; www.expeditions.com.
BRIGHTLY FEATHERED FRIENDS
Manu Biosphere Reserve in the Amazon
Basin of southeastern Peru is richer in
bird species than any region on Earth.
Some 600 types have been ID’d at Manu
Wildlife Center, the comfortable lodge
that’s a Valhalla for birders, who pad their
life lists with extreme rarities like the elusive antpitta, fun finds like toucans, and
showy ones like red-and-green macaw and
blue-and-gold macaw that congregate on
nearby clay riverbanks. And when the
birds aren’t singing, the monkeys are
swinging. • www.manu-wildlife-center
.com; 13-day tours $4,150 with Field Guides
Birding Tours; www.fieldguides.com.
120 N a t i o n a l G e o g r a p h i c T r av e l e r
JEFF VANUGA/CORBIS (LEFT), FRANS LANTING (RIGHT)
With little to fear from predators (the occasional mountain lion notwithstanding), the wild horse population in Wyoming increases 20 percent a year on
average. The natural clay licks in Peru’s Manu Biosphere Reserve (right) serve as magnets for highly vocal, fabulously feathered red-and-green macaws.